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SYRIAN troops liberated a village in the Barada valley yesterday where extremists have cut off water supplies to 5.5 million people.
The army stormed Basimah, at the eastern end of the valley, after the al-Qaida-linked Levant Conquest Front (LCF) rejected a tentative truce offer on Wednesday night.
The jihadists retreated towards the al-Fijah springs, where they sabotaged the waterworks supplying Damascus at the end of last month.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said five villages in the valley had reached an “arrangement” with the government, but not al-Fijah.
He said was concerned that the fighting would jeopardise peace talks due to start in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana on January 23, echoing Western-backed faction Ahrar asSham, who called it “signs of a collapsing truce.”
Ahrar leader Ali al-Omar said it rejected the truce as Russia was one of its guarantors and it excluded “other factions” — the LCF and Isis.
